You Do, I Don’t

by Mary E. Hunt

[Mary Hunt, You Do, I Don’t, pp. 253-258, in Redefining Sexual Ethics, eds. Susan Davies and Eleanor Haney, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1991.]

The most satisfying wedding I ever attended was in a Quaker meeting house followed by a swish reception with two lavender brides on the top of a chocolate wedding cake. The service was tasteful, with Quaker silence and well-chosen words. One participant remarked that Annie was "the reason for a smile of uncommon radiance on Lynnae's face." I quite agreed. They have lived happily ever after, at least for five years, with every sign of more to come.

Other such celebrations have been moving as well. Two friends exchanged rings and promises at an annual meeting of lesbian and gay Christians; their anniversary is always a weekend party. Two more took to the hills for an outdoor affirmation of their love surrounded by family, children, and friends. Still another couple chose to do it privately with a priest to witness their vows at home. I say, do whatever chimes your bells.

There is another side to all of this that deserves exploration lest we romanticize ourselves into a corner. Some celebrations have been videotaped with the tape lasting longer than the relationship. Others have been painful affairs with hurt over parental rejection exacerbated by family members unwilling to attend the ceremony. Still others have never gone beyond the discussion stage with intimacy issues surfacing and old tapes rolling about what marriage means. These folk have bailed out of the whole relationship. Love is like that sometimes.

The ups and downs of wedded bliss accrue to lesbian and gay people in equal measure to our heterosexual and bisexual counterparts, albeit with that extra added hassle that we are not supposed to marry. This extra measure is not incidental, but overcoming it should not be the only goal as we reshape the world to make space for ourselves. The goal, mine at least, is to make love abound in a world where there is precious little of it.

The debate over to wed or not to wed is a sign of how far we have come as lesbian and gay people. That churches are seriously entertaining the notion of marriage for us makes me alternately delighted and skeptical. As long as certain rights and responsibilities accrue to heterosexuals who marry, I believe that they should also accrue to lesbian and gay people. But as long as lesbian and gay people have a choice, I urge us to take leadership in breaking the two-by-two pattern that is alleged to have begun with Noah and his nameless wife.

CELEBRATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP"

I think that friendship, not coupledness, ought to be the relational norm, especially within the Christian tradition. As I have argued in Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship, the heterosexual marriage norm is inadequate to the needs of most people and should be replaced by friendship. Everyone has been or at least tried to be friends. Children can learn the fine art of friendship. Friends can be of any age, race, or gender, albeit with systemic difficulties built in. Even pets can be our friends. It is with this in mind that I look carefully if critically at the move toward lesbian and gay covenants, commitments, yes, marriages, weddings, and happily ever after.

I do think the right of gays and lesbians to marry is essential to our liberation in church and society. Further, if children are to be brought into our homes with some semblance of security, perhaps marriage is a good start. Even more convincing to church people is the sacramental grace of marriage. At best it is the prayerful support of a loving community that is brought to bear on a given twosome.

Further, I have seen real good come out of ceremonies, like the healing of family bonds when siblings have come to witness their sister's covenant. I am even persuaded by John Boswell's research that same-sex marriage ceremonies have been part of early church history.

Still, I have strong reservations about same-sex marriages. Since most churches will not be offering Saturday slots on their wedding calendars to lesbian and gay people any time soon, we might as well discuss the issues before the industry closes in around us.

THE PROS AND CONS OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGES

First, two people need support to maintain and deepen a relationship. Lesbian women especially (perhaps less so for gay men) need to build strong networks of friends, an extensive and intensive support system I within which to live and a safety net within which to fall. Why not I celebrate that network instead of or in addition to a coupled relationship?For example, a friend who was moving invited all of her women friends to send her forth. It was a time to say what she meant to us, to wish her well, and to promise a permanent presence in her life even though she would be far away.

Second, coupled relationships are as much an economic covenant as an emotional one. Whether through joint checking accounts, life insurance beneficiaries, or other niceties of advanced capitalism, coupled relationships reinforce the notion of "just the two of us against the world,” which keeps the wheels of the system running. I suspect that advanced patriarchal capitalism can stand a few stray same-gender couples here and there, especially in the top economic brackets.

Most people, however, would be better off if we socialized our resources, shared appliances and fancy cooking tools that we use rarely instead of having them in each home. What if we bought essentials co-operatively, instead of household by household, to lower costs? Granted the price of toilet paper is not the first thing one thinks of when deeply in love, but why reinforce the economic and social mode that has kept so many people down?

Third, same-gender coupling services reinforce the notion that relationships are forever and ever amen. Heterosexual marriages are styled this way, and as politically correct as the wording may be, the covenants I have witnessed have had that "forever" quality of which I am increasingly suspicious. It is not that I encourage promiscuity or reject stability. It is simply that I wonder if quantity (i.e., forever) and not quality (i.e., while it is healthy, life-giving, and community-enhancing for both persons) is really the issue when it comes to love.

Will commitment services tempt people (women especially, who sometimes stay together long after it is healthy to split) to persevere in a relationship that has been pronounced publicly? Will the partners feel constrained by their commitment to share their struggles with people who could help because the wedding created an illusion about the perfect couple?

Finally, if covenants were to become the norm within our communities, what does this mean about those of us who live, albeit some of us are in monogamous committed relationships, without benefit of such celebrations? Will we become the new "unwed mothers" and couples "living in sin" of heterosexual fame? Far-fetched as this may sound, I reject any move toward neo-puritanism that will gain lesbian and gay love respectability by mimicking the heterosexual model. I also wonder whether some of the urge toward same-sex commitment services isn't part of an unconscious move to make us "OK"; to sanitize our love, which needs no such soap and water; to mainstream us, when in fact the mainstream needs a good push in the direction of honesty.

This is precisely the point: the heterosexual and bi-sexual community has much to learn from us. We have much to teach: our strong reliance on one another for survival, not simply on our partner, if we have one, but on our community; life with dignity and fun even if we are not

partnered; endless variety in how we make our lives work in the face of oppression. These are valuable contributions that, when taken seriously, will reshape the ethical norms of our [Western] society.

The two major contributions of every lesbian and gay person who is out are love and honesty. We are willing to say that we love whom we love. Our honesty gets us in as much trouble as our love. To survive, indeed to thrive, as many of us do, we have learned "that's what friends are for." Hence, I reiterate my intuition, nascent but increasingly compelling, that what we ought to celebrate is friendship, lots of it and often.

CELEBRATION OF FRIENDSHIP

What would such celebrations look like? Some of them would look like the commitment services I seem to be rejecting. That is, it might be two friends who wish to say something to each other and their friends about the meaning of the relationship and their commitments to it and to the individuals that form it.

But don't stop with that model. Let your imagination soar. Think of your dearest friends, the ones whom we call "family of choice," the ones without whom life would be meaningless. Think of far-flung friends, old friends, work and work-out colleagues who have become close over the years, a neighbor who has become a real mainstay, your sister or brother who has surprised you over the years by her or his love. The list is endless and so are the celebrations - parties, liturgies, an annual picnic, Thanksgiving at home, your birthday with presents for them, a letter in which you say it all to all. The form is not as important as the content, and the content is honest love, not just for one other, but for several, many, perhaps in the next life, for all.

The advent of same-sex ceremonies is not far off. They are a regular part of some churches, such as the Metropolitan Community Church, and other reasonable religious groups that take love seriously. Far from wanting to put an end to them, I urge that we expand their scope, widen their parameters, and begin to see how communal and personal life can be enhanced when such options are made available to everyone whether coupled or not. This initial exploration of options is meant to complement that movement so that we can turn the oppression of heterosexist patriarchy into the liberation of friends in all nations.